Kenneth McMahon
Just how many words can be written about a single photograph? Felt like a lot of repetitive filler here, like Winchester had a word quota he needed to fill. This is the second of his books I've read and like that one (The Professor and the Madman) there's a ton of random speculation. I'm just not sure I get along with this writer, which is a pity because I tend to like the subject matter he chooses to write about.
Started out promising with a lot of the ingredients I like - rural English setting, an antiquarian type character conducting historical research and some well written interesting characters - however the middle section of the book became tedious with the lead character becoming increasingly annoying with her constant lecturing and talking down to the family staying with her. Redeems itself a little with the ending but as another reviewer pointed out it would've made a much better short story.
Wikipedia tells me Nick Carter was originally a gumshoe in the early 20th century but the character was completely rebooted as a spy in the 60s to take advantage of the popularity of the James Bond films. And he very much is a Bond knockoff with him being interrupted by a phone call mid-shag to meet his boss for a new mission (New York and multiple other US cities are going to be blown up with nuclear suitcase bombs by some disaffected Russian baddies who don't like that there's a cold war and would prefer all out mayhem - one character is literally named Warnow). Then he meets the Q knockoff who shows him a few of the new gadgets he's invented and like the Bond films, they all come in handy later on. And like Bond, the womanising is off the charts. In fact, it's so absurd here that it actually just becomes hilarious. He beds 5 women here, all within minutes of meeting them. They're literally gagging for it as soon as they lay eyes on him. It's all very teenage boy wish fulfillment stuff but again it's so over the top that it becomes absurdly funny and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a fun diversionary quick read.
Figured I'd get it read before Branagh's movie comes out. It's supposedly based on this book, but the trailer bears no resemblance to the book whatsoever, with its seances and supernatural goings on and its Venice setting.
The premise is a cracking one. Talk at a party comes around to murder and a 13 year old girl mentions that she once witnessed a murder. Nobody believes her but an hour later, she's found head down in a bucket permanently bobbing for apples. This is Christie in her later years so she seems to shoehorn some of her own moaning in whenever she can. She has four different characters mention apropos of nothing that “they don't keep mental patients locked up anymore, they just send them home these days to live in the community”. The talk of the killer potentially being “some mentally disturbed person” who walked into the party and spotted an opportunity occurs so much that you would think it must have some relevance to the outcome. Characters also complain more than once of mothers not raising their children right anymore, children getting into cars with strangers and long haired young men smashing up phone boxes for the hell of it. Though she does have the good sense to have a dialogue between teenage boys and immediately start off by saying they had a very adult manner and if you closed your eyes you might think it was two elderly gentlemen speaking. Nobody wants to read Agatha Christie's attempts at 60s youth slang.
Quite a dull read overall with Poirot plodding around repeatedly asking characters the same questions like a Broken Sword game - “And what did you think of the young girl who was murdered?” “What do you know about the foreign girl who disappeared a few years ago?” etc. In the end, the mystery and its reveal weren't particularly interesting. I'm not sure the motives of the killer fully make sense but I'm also past the point of thinking about it too much.
Honestly a bit of a slog at times, particularly in the sections where it's just fact after fact in the form of “In 1243, X invaded Y, followed by an invasion by Z in 1301. Meanwhile U, V and W were at war with each other over T.” etc etc. There are long passages like this where it's hard to keep track of who's who. The book does improve once it gets to the past 300 years or so.
The tagline of “Indispensable for Travellers” (presumably added to the title by the publishers rather than the author) is laughable though. Aside from some interesting talk about ancient sites and cruise ship ports, there's really nothing here for the tourist.
Doyle is at his best when writing typical Dublin characters so the first two stories here are the best of the bunch (A da is unsure how to act when his daughter invites a black fella for dinner; Jimmy Rabbitte sets up another band) but the rest of it is subpar, especially in the stories where Doyle writes from an immigrant's perspective in silly stilted dialogue (“We enter the cafe called Bewleys”)
This would've been my bible if it existed when I was a teenager and I would've pored over it endlessly. I'm less of a Jackson fan these days, but I had a lot of fun revisiting his music whilst reading along to this over the past few months. While I've given it 5 stars, there are actually a couple of downsides to it. Firstly, it glosses over, and sometimes outright skips, much of the earlier Jackson 5 tracks especially ones where Michael isn't lead, but later on will devote a page to say Quincy Jones' The Dude where Jackson contributed an inaudible backing vocal buried deep in the mix somewhere. Secondly, it's somewhat poorly written sometimes when it comes to descriptions of the songs themselves. There are a lot of meaningless, filler words used.Still, there's a ton of information here that I didn't know, and I appreciate the huge efforts that went into this book. Loved all of the info on various releases, edits and remixes. Instead, that bible was the pocket size The Complete Guide to the Music of Michael Jackson & The Jackson Family by Geoff Brown. Would easily recommend this if wanting bitesize, but musically literate reviews of Jackson's songs up to 1996.
Subtitled “Twenty-Six stories featuring Gervase Fen” though only half of them do. More short (usually 5-6 pages) little puzzles than mystery stories. A fun, diverting read which I've been dipping into occasionally, this kind of thing is always a mixed bag and so not always a satisfying read. “The Pencil”, more of a crime story rather than a whodunnit like most of the stories here, was probably my favourite of the bunch.
Idealistic journalist quits the newspaper after having a story quashed by his boss for financial and political reasons and decides to set up his own magazine to expose the dark underbelly of his city. There are essentially three short stories told in quick succession in the novel - baseball players on the take, a murderous abortionist and a Ku Klux Klan like group. The latter leads to the finale but feels like it gets short shrift, only beginning with about 30 pages remaining.
A solid entertaining read, though one which may end up being fairly forgettable.
Simplistically written, but that might be for the benefit of teenage readers learning about the subject in school. My son currently is and I figured I'd read it too to educate myself on something I just knew about on a surface level.
An interesting and entertaining read but loses a star for the many variations of “this didn't actually happen, I've invented it for the purpose of this story” in the endnotes.
I don't usually give up on books but when I got to the scene where one of the Stoker kids is eating saltwater taffy in 1850s Ireland I knew it was time to tap out. There are numerous anachronistic errors throughout, some linguistical, some geographical, some historical but I gritted my teeth and tried to push through. “Saltwater taffy” (a term basically unknown in Ireland, a candy which Wikipedia tells me wasn't even invented in America until the 1880s) was the last straw. I guess I'll never know if Bram Stoker goes on to eat Twinkies and watch baseball.
* Numerous modern words and phrases, along with American spellings in what are supposed to be journal entries and newspaper reports
** Clontarf is described as being “bordered by a park to the east and with views of the ‘harbor' to the west” Any look at a map of Dublin will tell you how wrong that is.
*** Artane Castle was completely demolished in the 1820s; While photography existed in the mid 19th century, it was in its infancy and newspapers certainly weren't printing photographs, let alone of local criminals in what was then rural Ireland.
Far too many characters making it hard to keep track of who's who (and it turns out half of them are unnecessary to the plot anyway). On top of that, it all seemed fairly implausible with small town gumshoe Cooperman suddenly hanging out with famous movie stars and investigating a murder suicide he's not even being paid to look into. Disappointing read.
I wanted to love this. I discovered John Rogers' Youtube channel last year and absolutely adore his videos. They were perfect moments of calmness to watch during turbulent times and they'll often be the last thing I watch before bed to relax myself. The guy just seems like a lovely chap and I like spending time with him and enjoying his enthusiasm. However, the guy in this book is a slightly different version of him. Not any better or worse, just different. Whereas the videos feel somewhat ethereal with their use of Satie and others (even when it's in some industrial wasteland), the book is a more down to earth ramble accompanied by cans of Stella and samosas, which sounds great honestly but offers a different feel. And maybe it's just me much preferring the visual aspect over trying to imagine places I'm not familiar with. There's something really nice about watching the daylight fade towards the end of his walks too.
At almost 400 pages it's overly long, the plot gets a bit complicated and messy, and the ending isn't particularly satisfying (it feels rushed, which is a weird thing to say in a book this long)
However it was fun to read a story set in a Dublin of 1990 with an ongoing bus strike, multiple Bewley's locations, an old guard coming to grips with “the women's movement” but also moving away from the influence of the church.
Written by an Irishman who emigrated to Canada in the 70s, I wonder if these books were ever released in Ireland? I wasn't familiar with them, but I wasn't paying attention too hard either.
I had forgotten the novel was going to be a thing, so I was pleasantly surprised to bump into it on a grocery store shelf a couple weeks ago. An appropriate location to find it given the mass market drugstore paperback look of the book.
The book expands on Cliff Booth's backstory and focuses more on Rick Dalton's coming to terms with where his career is heading. There is some substantial re-jigging of the plot so ultimately the Manson family and Sharon Tate stories could've been excised completely and the book would've been better off for it. Some things don't work here either - there are three unnecessary chapters completely set in the world of Lancer, and the precocious child actor didn't work for me in the film. Her role is greatly expanded here.
Overall, a fun read. Not great as a novel. Tarantino digresses too much into asides about B movie directors and TV stars for it to work as a novel, but those digressions were probably my favourite parts of the book. His writing of certain female characters feels much more cringy on the page than on screen (He twice mentions a character's “dirty soiled panties”) and the crudity can get a bit eye-rolling at times, but I would definitely read more from him if he goes down this route.
I don't feel it needed three chapters dedicated to the Bre-X scandal in which the protagonist doesn't even appear (I was vaguely familiar with the scandal so it was still fascinating to learn about but it felt like I was reading another book for a while; a brief synopsis would've sufficed) but otherwise an entertaining read.
Poorly written and edited (someone must've accidentally hit Find>Replace at some point because 1996 suddenly becomes 2006 for a few pages. If you weren't familiar with the period [Veronica Guerin's murder] it would certainly throw the reader for a loop) but otherwise a decent overview of the subject matter, if you're interested in this kind of thing (I'm not particularly, just clearing a gifted book off my bookshelf)
Unfortunately mostly dull with only the Sayers and Iles contributions shining through, though the latter is a bit overlong. Sayers seems to be the only one who came at the case as a mystery writer occasionally wondering how the real life problem may have been presented in a mystery story, and how a fictional detective would've judged a clue.
I can never figure out with detective novels whether I should be disappointed that the reveal matched my guess or whether I should be pleased with myself for getting it right. I think I prefer being tricked so to speak so I can have that “Aha, that's a clever twist!” moment.
In truth, I think some of it easily telegraphed here. The sudden jump from Simon and Jacqueline being a couple to Simon and Linnet being married was an immediate eyebrow raiser to me. Then Poirot overhears a conversation “We have to go through with this...” and finally Christie shows her hand a bit too much when neither of the two are present on Race's list of possible suspects. I also did clue in that the shooting managed to give both of them an alibi, though I didn't quite figure out how Simon could then go commit murder with a wounded leg, so the reveal of the second bullet was clever.
Of course, the thought pops up in my head afterwards... why didn't he just “accidentally” push her overboard rather than hatching an overly elaborate plan to generate a murder mystery on a boat with a world famous detective onboard? But obviously that's all part of the fun with these books ;)
One side note: Christie's conservatism comes out here with her ridiculously silly portrayal of the leftist Ferguson as an Angry Young Man railing against the entire world and who is excessively rude and boorish to every single person he meets apparently.
When I was about 12 or 13, my siblings and I became friendly with another family of kids. We'd go to their house, they'd come to ours. The oldest girl was my age and we were both readers so we swapped books. Stig of the Dump is the only one I can recall. I remember enjoying it, but don't even remember if I finished it or not. Likewise I don't remember how this brief friendship ended. I think her family must have moved away but childhood memories tend to be misty.
I didn't think too much about her again until a few years ago when I learned of her suicide after it made national headlines back home in Ireland. I obviously didn't know her well, and only for a brief moment in time, so don't want to eulogise but I've always associated this book with that period of my childhood. Thanks for the loan Dara!